


light hidden and singing

by midheaven



Category: IZONE (Band)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29856333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midheaven/pseuds/midheaven
Summary: “I’m not going anywhere, Minju-yah,” Chaewon whispers, a repetition, an affirmation. “You’ll have me.”Four promises between Minju and Chaewon.
Relationships: Kim Chaewon (IZONE)/Kim Minju
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	light hidden and singing

_We see each other through the glass. We witness each other. That’s something, to be seen by another human, to be seen over all the years. That’s something, too. Love plus time. Love that’s movable, invisible as a liquid or gas,[love that finds a way in.](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/a-love-story-samantha-hunt) _

  
  
  
  


Minju watches how Yujin and Wonyoung move. How they always know where the other’s next footstep will be, when the other will turn their head. It’s like they’re dancing, almost, even when they’re just packing their things. 

The only sounds from their dorms, this past week: the zipping up of a suitcase, the taping closed of a box, the shutting of an empty cabinet. Deconstructions, a house that’s slowly detaching from a home. Minju wonders how much longer it will take before she’s hit with the full force of it. Wonders: how will it come? Startlingly harsh, like the death of a star? Or slow, passed before she can even notice, like a sunset?

She watches Yujin and Wonyoung again. A strange envy simmers underneath Minju’s skin—that they’ll have each other, when this blows over. Like Sakura and Nako. Like Eunbi and—

“Hi,” a voice greets. 

Minju looks up from where she’s hugged her knees on the floor. Not that she needs to, to know who it is. “You’re here,” she says. 

Chaewon smiles and settles beside her. Always sits beside Minju with a part of them flush, like their shoulders or their sides. Today: their thighs. Minju leans her head on her. 

“Look at our maknaes,” she whispers to Chaewon. “They’ve grown.”

Chaewon nods, her hair sweeping over Minju’s face. Crinkling of plastic. A piece of chocolate appears in front of Minju. She takes a bite, eats it from Chaewon’s hands. “They’ve grown a lot,” Chaewon concurs. 

“I wonder what they’ll do,” Minju mumbles, the sweetness turning in her mouth. Because that’s all she can do now: wonder. Secrets were unheard of, between the twelve of them, until the beginning of the year. Chaeyeon excusing herself to answer a phone call instead of just taking it in front of them. Hitomi staying behind in the car to have extended discussions with their manager. 

There’s Chaewon, too. An uptick in her conversations with Eunbi, most of them hushed. Still stings to think about, for Minju, even now. 

“I kind of want them to take a break,” Chaewon says, laugh tinting her voice. “I wanted to be able to take them to school, you know. Yena unnie and I would fight over who’d drive them.”

“That would be nice,” Minju says. But like always, with Chaewon, what she truly wants to say climbs up her throat to the surface. “At least they’ll have each other, though.”

Chaewon’s stiffening would probably be imperceptible to anyone save Minju. “We’ll all have each other,” she says. 

There’s not much chocolate left. Minju presses what remains of it against the roof of her mouth. Hums. 

“Minju-yah.”

She turns. Chaewon reaches to tuck Minju’s hair behind her ear. Flash of fearless steel in her gaze, shake of her head when she tells Minju, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Minju’s heartbeat picks up. She curls her hand into a fist, Chaewon’s cardigan crumpled in her palm. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Minju-yah,” Chaewon whispers, a repetition, an affirmation. “You’ll have me.”

Chaewon presses a kiss to Minju’s forehead, fierce. Swordslash through the overgrowth of Minju’s thoughts. 

“Promise?” Minju asks. 

“I promise,” Chaewon says, and what else can Minju do but believe her?

  
  
  
  


Minju cranes her neck to do a final sweep of her surroundings. What is she looking for, in the late night dark? Journalists? Stalkers? Threats? Maybe they’re all the same, to her; at this place, at this time. 

But there’s no one in sight, so she opens the door to Chaewon’s car and gets inside. 

Her seatbelt clicks shut to the sound of Chaewon asking, “All good?”

“Yeah,” Minju replies. Chaewon starts the car and the engine roars to life. 

This side of the city is bare, skeleton bones away from the beating heart that is central Seoul in the nighttime. Minju glances at the clock display on the Chaewon’s dashboard. It’s a little past one. 

This Chaewon has always been her favourite. Chaewon in the quiet, Chaewon in the sparse light. It’s the only Chaewon that’s solely Minju’s. Minju thinks movies on the couch, thinks craving-driven impromptu convenience store runs. How she and Chaewon are still able to see each other, despite. 

“Anywhere in mind?” Chaewon asks. 

“None really,” Minju replies, shrugs. Fiddles with the airconditioning controls. 

“Just a drive around it is, then.” Chaewon grins. “Until we get hungry.”

That makes Minju look at Chaewon’s wrists. Thinner than she’d ever remembered them being. Minju bites back the _How’s training?_ she was about to ask. Asks instead, “Aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Hungry?”

Chaewon frowns. “No.”

Minju chews on her lip. So much has changed, she thinks. Maybe even too much. Just as quickly as their lives were turned three years ago they turn back. Reset of a clock. Straightening of a spring. Here they are again, at the mercy of their love for the stage. Here they are again, unsure if they’ll have it. Here they are again, willing to do anything for it. 

“We’re getting tteokbokki,” Minju says. 

Chaewon smiles and shakes her head like she’s resigned. Hair falls out of the loose ponytail she’d tied, out of the cap she’d put on. “I must be see-through to you, Kim Minju.”

“You are,” Minju says. 

“This diet the company has me on is—” Chaewon only shakes her head again. 

She’d thrown herself into training pretty much immediately. Chaewon lives in their company’s dance studio; her and Eunbi overaware that all the company’s hopes hinge on them. Minju’s moments with her have been limited to this—stolen moments in the thin line between night and day. 

“How long do you have to be on it?” Minju asks. 

Chaewon shrugs. Turns on her blinker. Minju vaguely recognises the street they turn to—this is the way to their old dorms. There’s a tteokbokki place that’s open until four they liked to go to, all twelve of them, two street corners away from their apartment building. 

Minju tugs at Chaewon’s sleeve. Chaewon understands, takes her right hand off the wheel, and Minju takes it. Kisses the underside of her wrist, her pulse point, before lacing their fingers together. 

“Do you think you can take care of yourself better?” Minju asks. “Please?”

Chaewon lets out a laugh before sparing Minju a sideward glance. When she registers Minju’s face, her expression shifts—smile fading, mouth setting. 

“Alright, Minju-yah,” Chaewon says, that soft voice only Minju hears. 

Minju begins to untangle their hands. Chaewon resists, holds, pushes, anchors their linked fingers on the top of Minju’s thigh.

“I will.”

  
  
  
  
  


The door opens, and Minju doesn’t know if she’s surprised to see her or if she’d been expecting this since morning. 

“You came,” Minju says, and Chaewon rolls her eyes and smiles at her. 

The Music Core dressing room always felt lonely, even before—it’s stifling now that Minju knows that after this awaits a quieter car ride, a quieter dinner. She should be used to it, by now, but something about it all still feels like a metronome knocked off-time. 

At least one thing today can resettle her. 

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Chaewon asks, sly grin, glinting eyes. She clambers onto Minju’s lap on the small sofa. 

Minju’s staff are gone for at least an hour, having lunch. Chaewon and Eunbi were slotted into their girl group quickly—so quick that here Minju is, still MCing while they begin their promotions. 

Chaewon kisses her. Insistent, heavy as she sinks Minju into the couch. Her hands on Minju’s jaw. Skin warm. A desperation that has never been there before; a desperation that’s here now because they no longer have all the time in the world. Not like they used to. 

Minju blinks her eyes open when Chaewon pulls from her. She doesn’t know if something pressed on her eyelids but the lights look a little brighter around Chaewon, a little rosier. Filtered scene unfolding before her. Chaewon’s smile blossoms on her face, flower Minju wants to pluck and keep. 

“You’re so pretty today,” Minju says. 

“You think so?” Chaewon spreads her hand and flips her hair behind her shoulder.

Minju takes the knuckle of her index and runs it across Chaewon’s cheek. “I do,” she says. “This suits you.”

“Which?” Chaewon asks. 

_The hair_ , Minju could say. Or: _The outfit._ What she says instead is, “The stage.”

Chaewon is in full performance gear, only her mic missing. There’s glitter on her eyelids and her hair is just by her collarbone, her fringe long gone. Here is a girl meant to be seen. Here is a girl meant to be heard. Here is a girl meant to have the world at her feet. Minju can’t imagine a future in which Chaewon isn’t singing. 

_A future._ Because that’s what this is. Chaewon sits in front of her at the genesis of her new life—Minju still sits in their old one, in her leftover role. It’s odd, she thinks. This meeting feels like one that’s of the same space, but of two different times. 

“You say that as if it doesn’t suit _you_ ,” Chaewon counters. 

Minju scoffs out a laugh. What does she have? Her name, her face, her history in the group. A few cameos, a sparse resume, a small agency. CF and role offers that dissipate as quickly as they appear in her manager’s inbox. Who is she now, standing alone? Who is she now, afterward?

“I don’t know,” is Minju’s answer to herself, and to Chaewon. “I might go to college.”

“For acting?”

Minju shrugs. She taps out a rhythm on the back of Chaewon’s hand, comfort-seeking habit. 

Chaewon knows. Like she always does. “You’ll do well in anything you want to, Minju-yah,” she whispers. Leans closer. 

All Minju can do is nod. Swallow the doubts jammed in her throat. “Okay.”

“I _mean_ it,” Chaewon says, pressing a finger onto Minju’s chest. “And I’ll be behind you all the way. Just promise me you won’t give up.”

Minju looks at Chaewon. Strength of her heart muscle. The beat it thrums to. 

“I won’t,” Minju says. “I won’t.”

  
  
  
  
  


“You’re not even watching anymore,” Chaewon whispers to her, teasing. She nudges Minju with her shoulder. 

Minju glances up and gives Chaewon a small smile. “Sorry,” she says. “Guess I’m a bit tired.”

The film’s audio melts into unintelligible noise. Minju’s parents and the agency had helped her get this apartment in Sinchon-dong; Chaewon decides to visit her, this Sunday evening. Their legs are tangled underneath Minju’s blanket, the cool, muted glow of her secondhand television the only light in the room. 

“Do you need to be up early tomorrow?”

Minju shakes her head. “No,” she replies. “Just have to go to the agency after lunch.”

When she adjusts her position to get more comfortable against Chaewon, the paper bag on her bedside table catches Minju’s eye. 

“Oh. Right.” Minju blinks. She’d nearly forgotten. “Give me a second,” she tells Chaewon, pushing against her mattress and getting up. 

“What is it?” Chaewon asks, moving to get up with her. 

Minju pushes down on her shoulders to keep her still. Bends to place a kiss on her cheek. “Just hold on.”

Inside the bag is a small, velvet box. Minju picks it out and heads back toward Chaewon, switching on her nightlight on the way. 

Chaewon gasps when she sees it. Sits up on the bed, pauses the movie. “Kim Minju,” she sighs, exaggerated, hands on her mouth. Minju rolls her eyes. 

“Unnie, it’s not—” Chaewon’s attention on it makes Minju fumble it in her hands. “It’s not—you know it’s too—”

_Soon for us,_ Minju wants to say. But then she counts the years: two and a half since Chaewon blessed her with the sunlight in her mouth and the honey of her voice. Not too soon at all, she surmises. Knots have been tied with less time underneath. 

Minju sits in front of Chaewon, anyway. Opens the box to reveal the ring inside. 

“ _Oh,_ ” Chaewon exhales. She takes it and holds it to the dim light, the metal gleaming. 

It’s not anything special—there’s not even a gemstone. It’s double-banded, parallel lines, but at the midpoint the band breaks its form and morphs into two waves before straightening back out. 

“Water-bearer,” Chaewon says, knowing again. Minju smiles and feels the heat in her own cheeks. 

“Source of a river,” Minju says, too, and Chaewon smiles at her in turn. 

Chaewon puts it on herself. The moment feels suspended in air. A dream. Maybe it’s why Minju holds her breath. 

When it sits firmly above her knuckle, Chaewon holds her hand up beside her face. Smiles softly at Minju, and Minju startles at the ache that climbs from her chest. 

It feels like something they’ve done before. Gifts exchanged across a shared bed. Skyscraper and city-lit. This has happened: Tokyo, Bangkok, New York, Los Angeles. Nothing here is new—they are still the Minju and Chaewon they have always been. 

But it feels like something completely novel, anyway. Like they’ve invented this with their own hands. Like this is something the world has yet to know.

There’s still the sparkle of mischief on Chaewon’s face when she asks, “What’s this, then, if not a proposal?”

Minju reaches out and touches the ring. Warm now that it’s spent time on Chaewon’s skin. “A promise?” she offers. 

“Of what?”

Minju shrugs. “Of anything. Everything?”

The moment stills. They look at each other. That’s what they do—see each other, always, ever, despite, through. It’s all they need. Words are flimsy when Chaewon looks at Minju like this; Minju knows that Chaewon understands the whole of it just by the light reflected in Minju’s own eyes. 

Her only time of sureness. Everything always feels adrift, now that Minju has to start all over again—but one thing has persisted. Persevered. Anchored her through the harsh night. 

“A promise, then,” Chaewon says, reaching out to cradle Minju’s face. 

Minju feels the metal of the ring on her cheek. How the vein there runs straight to Chaewon’s heart. Unbreakable. 

  
  
  


_In the deep dark, like a shining star / we’d recognize each other anywhere / Look at me, always / Remember this forever /[promise?](https://youtu.be/G8GaQdW2wHc) _

**Author's Note:**

> > _water-bearer_ — aquarius; _source of a river_ — the 원 in 채원. [twitter](http://twitter.com/mediumcoelis), [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.me/pisceshorizon).


End file.
